Article Abstract: Over the past few decades, American local law enforcement agencies have engaged in an unprecedented degree of cooperation with the federal government to police immigration in the nations interior. I argue that this regime of cooperative federalism in immigration enforcement is an intentional and strategic use of the federal executives authority. Drawing insight from the bureaucratic agency literature, I develop a formal model that analyzes the presidents decision to invite subnational participation in policymaking. An empirical analysis of the 287(g) program highlights the models central trade-off: gains from cost-sharing versus losses from extremism. By deputizing local officers to act as federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, 287(g) induced a dramatic increase in immigration policing at little federal expense. But the localities that selected into the program were preference outliers who wielded their newfound agency differently from their federal counterparts: they escalated enforcement by aggressively policing misdemeanors, particularly traffic offenses.
An Agency Perspective on Immigration Federalism was authored by Asya Magazinnik. It was published by Chicago in JOP in 2025.
